Table of Contents

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British Social Attitudes Survey, 1997 (ICPSR 3100)

Principal Investigator(s):
Social and Community Planning Research

Summary:

This survey is part of a continuing series designed to
monitor trends in a wide range of social attitudes in Great Britain.
The British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA) is similar to the General
Social Survey carried out by the National Opinion Research Center
(NORC) in the United States. The BSA questionnaire has two parts, one
administered by an interviewer and the other completed by the
respondent. As in the past, the 1997 interview questionnaire contained
a number of "core" questions covering the major topic areas of
defense, the economy, labor market participation, and the welfare
state. The 1997 self-enumerated questionnaire was devoted to a series
of questions on a range of social, economic, political, and moral
issues. Topics covered (by section) are: (1) newspaper readership, (2)
party identification, (3) housing, (4) politics, (5) public spending,
(6) employment, (7) Europe, (8) countryside and transportation, (9)
the lottery, and (10) administration. An international initiative
funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the International Social Survey
Program (ISSP), also contributes a module to the BSA. The topic of the
ISSP module in this collection was work orientations. Additional
demographic data included age, education, income, marital status, and
religious and political affiliations.

This survey is part of a continuing series designed to
monitor trends in a wide range of social attitudes in Great Britain.
The British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA) is similar to the General
Social Survey carried out by the National Opinion Research Center
(NORC) in the United States. The BSA questionnaire has two parts, one
administered by an interviewer and the other completed by the
respondent. As in the past, the 1997 interview questionnaire contained
a number of "core" questions covering the major topic areas of
defense, the economy, labor market participation, and the welfare
state. The 1997 self-enumerated questionnaire was devoted to a series
of questions on a range of social, economic, political, and moral
issues. Topics covered (by section) are: (1) newspaper readership, (2)
party identification, (3) housing, (4) politics, (5) public spending,
(6) employment, (7) Europe, (8) countryside and transportation, (9)
the lottery, and (10) administration. An international initiative
funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the International Social Survey
Program (ISSP), also contributes a module to the BSA. The topic of the
ISSP module in this collection was work orientations. Additional
demographic data included age, education, income, marital status, and
religious and political affiliations.

Dataset(s)

Study Description

Citation

Social and Community Planning Research. BRITISH SOCIAL ATTITUDES SURVEY, 1997. ICPSR03100-v2. Brentwood, Essex, England:Social and Community Planning Research [producer], 1997. Colchester, Essex, England: UK Data Archive/Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributors], 2006-07-26. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03100.v2

(1) In 1999, Social and Community Planning Research
(SCPR) became the National Centre for Social Research. (2) Under
agreement with the UKDA, the data are disseminated as they were
received, without additional processing by ICPSR. This agreement also
provides that ICPSR will disseminate the data only for use within its
member institutions. Persons from nonmember institutions may request
these data directly from the UKDA. (3) The data are provided as an
SPSS portable file. (4) The documentation was converted to Portable
Document Format (PDF) by the UKDA. The PDF documentation can also be
downloaded from the UKDA Web
site. (5) The formats for some variables in the SPSS portable
file (e.g., HOMEKEEN) are not wide enough to accommodate the missing
value specifications. For some procedures SPSS will display these
missing values as asterisks. Users can widen the formats to display
the actual missing value codes. (6) The British Social Attitudes Survey
series began in 1983 and was conducted every year since, except in 1988
and 1992 when the core funding from the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts
was devoted to conducting post-election studies of political
attitudes and voting behavior in the British Election Study (BES) survey
series.

Methodology

Sample:
Multistage stratified random sampling. The sample of
addresses was drawn from the Postcode Address File. At each address,
the interviewer established how many occupied dwelling units it
contained. If there were several, one was selected at random for
interview (using a Kish grid and random numbers). The interviewer then
established how many adults aged 18 and older lived in the (selected)
dwelling unit. If there were several, one adult was selected (using a
similar procedure as that used for dwelling units). The unequal selection
probabilities arising from these procedures are taken into account by the
weighting.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release: 2001-05-29

Version History:

2006-07-26 The data and documentation were
resupplied by the United Kingdom Data Archive (UKDA). The data are now
available as an SPSS portable file and the documentation has been
converted to PDF by the UKDA.